My daughter has never had any chores. On the other hand, she has always had a pretty clear understanding of my limitations, and I think she feels that she is a valued and necessary part of the family unit... so she does things that keep our family running smoothly. She's been doing all of her own laundry for years now (she's 13) and does a fair amount of cooking and household clean up. Sometimes I ask, and sometimes she just does it. She can always say no but rarely does, and I respect it when she does say it. Sometimes I don't feel like cleaning up the kitchen, either, so it just stays dirty for a day - no harm, no foul.

She actually did less when she was 11-12ish than at any point before or after, so I think that might just be a rough time for kids in general... she had a lot of emotional issues and changes and all that puberty stuff going on, plus she was heavily involved in theatre, doing about a dozen shows in rapid succession, so she did less around the house.

I'm a single mom (no support from her dad or anyone else, really) and she's unschooled, so we're somewhat unique in that way. I cannot do everything, and that's been pretty obvious to Rain since she was tiny.

Thanks for that post, Dar. I do think my dd needs to adjust to the changes happening in her body. There are changes in her social life at school also - the time of cliques and bickering has begun. I just don't want her taking out frustrations on the rest of our family. And we have talked about this. Maybe I need to have another talk about hormones, bursts of anger and the like.

BenzJuliezMattzMom
Mom of 12 almost 13 yr old boy/2 yr old boy/11 yr old DD

My daughter has never had any chores. On the other hand, she has always had a pretty clear understanding of my limitations, and I think she feels that she is a valued and necessary part of the family unit... so she does things that keep our family running smoothly. She's been doing all of her own laundry for years now (she's 13) and does a fair amount of cooking and household clean up. Sometimes I ask, and sometimes she just does it. She can always say no but rarely does, and I respect it when she does say it. Sometimes I don't feel like cleaning up the kitchen, either, so it just stays dirty for a day - no harm, no foul.

She actually did less when she was 11-12ish than at any point before or after, so I think that might just be a rough time for kids in general... she had a lot of emotional issues and changes and all that puberty stuff going on, plus she was heavily involved in theatre, doing about a dozen shows in rapid succession, so she did less around the house.

I'm a single mom (no support from her dad or anyone else, really) and she's unschooled, so we're somewhat unique in that way. I cannot do everything, and that's been pretty obvious to Rain since she was tiny.

dar

This sounds like the ideal situation Dar. Not all kids are willing to pitch in like that for whatever reason (personality, family structure, relationship issues, whatever.) I think it has a lot to do with living up to expectations. Sounds like you have always expected your dd to help out, and your need was obvious to her, even if you didn't say that to her explicitly or force her to meet your expectaions. A kid in a family where mom and/or dad seem (to the child, anyway) to have everything under control might not see the expectation to help as reasonable. This is why I'm making my need known to my kids early!

It will be interesting to see how my own children mature in this way. As I said already, I require my 5 year old to help me and to do certain personal duties for herself, but I try to give her as much freedom within that framework as I can. I can see already that my 3 year old is just naturally more of a neat freak. He actually suggests to *me* that we pick up something before moving on to something else -- a practice I've never been good at, so he didn't learn it here!

I think you may be right about the age too. 11 was my #1 worst year of life. I remember sobbing to my parents how much I hated being 11.

Chandraj...one of the boys helps out when he feels like it (which, granted, is very rarely), the other one has never done so (not even once). Either way, it's fine with us. We don't believe in forcing, and in our house it works out just fine. Neither of them ever does anything toward cleaning their rooms (they have separate rooms) unless the rooms become too unihabitable even for them (which is extremely rarely). And that is especially ok with us, because it is THEIR space and we believe that they should feel as comfortable as they want within their little area. To be honest, I haven't seen the floor in either room in I don't know how long! LOL ! But I don't worry about it at all, because my room was the same way when I was a preteen/teen, so it's not anything strange for me.